Ask The Expert – Should I choose an integrated agency, creative agency or performance agency?

Door 4 is a performance marketing agency. We get results for clients, but we sit amongst an abundance of agencies of all types, and choosing an agency can be quite difficult.

We could potentially split the agency world into three pots. A creative agency is usually driven by brand communications art and ultimately emotion-led output, how the brand appears, and how it’s perceived. An assessment of those results can be quite subjective.

A performance agency is focused on results from specific channels. SEO, paid search, social media, e-commerce. That evaluation can take place by a graph, it’s winning or losing. 

An integrated agency user combined the creative and the performance elements. Whether this is 50/50 60/40 or 80/20. A truly integrated agency is going to be significantly larger than most creative or performance agencies. Although cynically, most integrated agencies still lean heavily towards one of the two core disciplines. 

Be careful not to conflate integrated agencies with generalist agencies. An integrated agency will have many deep specialisms.

While the generalist agency does a few things for reasonable but not always a specialist standard. If you’re an agency selection more than your specific requirements should govern the best fit.

Think about whether the outcome you seek is persuasive and brand-led or true platform performance that can be measured…

What type of agency would you choose?